


A Point Where It Breaks

by Quinnec



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I Blame Tumblr, Ozpin is tired, Spoilers: Volume 6 (RWBY), The Gods are cruel, have some feels because i am apparently coping through fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 02:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16735014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinnec/pseuds/Quinnec
Summary: Beacon has fallen. Hope is dead. Ozpin is tired.The Gods deliver their judgment.---Spoilers for Volume 6.





	A Point Where It Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> From this tumblr post by thenoob0308:
> 
> I wanna see a fanfic  
> Where Ozpin delivers the relics to Salem, because he’s tired of not fully dying and just wants to gods to come and kill everybody because at that point I would probably do that.

_The moon is bright tonight._

It’s his first truly coherent thought in hours, but it is undoubtedly true. White moonlight cascades downward from the Crescent and her fragments, bathing the world an eerie silver. It’s beautiful, in a way.

In the end, though, it’s only a reminder of how much has been lost.

Ozpin takes another halting step into the lands of the Grimm. Purple shadows slither against the ash-blackened ground. They creep forward in unearthly jerks, gnarled and mangled, like the flow of blood and the snap of bones. They stalk his footsteps; an escort, perhaps, or a warden.

Ozpin isn’t here to fight. Not this time.

The Lamp clinks softly against his hip with every uneven step. He digs the Scepter into the ground before him, fighting to keep his balance as his scorched legs threaten to buckle beneath him. The flesh is red and blistered, parts of it black and nerveless and beginning to rot.

Oz treks onward through the dust.

At last, he stumbles at the base of a flight of steps. Ozpin makes the mistake of looking up. A ghost of laughter rings through the halls, a memory Oz thought he had long buried. In his mind, there is the sound of toddling steps and children’s voices, racing down these stairs.

Once upon a time, this had been a loving home. Once upon a time, he had been happy here.

He wants to stop. He wants to rest. He wants to be _done._

Instead, he heaves himself up the steps to her throne room. The room is dim, a darkness lit only by hints of moonlight and the toxic, violet glow of crystals scattered against the walls. From the darkness curls a voice that will forever haunt his dreams.

_“Welcome, Ozpin.”_

He stops just beyond the doorway. “Hello, Salem.”

The woman—once his wife, now his adversary—glides forward. Her bone-white skin reflects the light of the broken moon. Once, he had called it beautiful.

“I have to say,” Salem hisses, “this _is_ a surprise.”

“The years have been kind to you,” Ozpin says. Salem’s eyes narrow in rage, and for a moment, Oz feels a spark in his soul, something that could ignite—

“But not,” Salem says deliberately, as her gaze sweeps his bowed frame, “to you.”

—and feels it flicker and die.

She is right. Maybe she has always been right. Oz can feel the weight on his shoulders, burden and grief in equal amounts. After all his millennia of fighting, it boils down to this:

Oz is tired.

He’s tired of dying and being reborn. He’s tired of stealing young men away from their lives to fight in an unwinnable war. He’s tired of training huntsmen and huntresses to battle endless waves of darkness. He’s tired of pulling humanity together over and over again just to have it all slip through his fingers like shards of glass.

Maybe humanity can still be saved. Maybe if the Gods had given the task to someone else, _anyone_ else…

But no, they’d entrusted Ozma. And if there’s one thing Oz has learned of himself over the centuries, it is that he, inevitably, ends up on the losing side.

Oz pulls the Sword from its sheath on his back. He’d once planned to use it on the woman before him. He tosses it to Salem’s feet.

Salem’s eyes light up. She’s guessed why he is here. “The surprises continue. Does it feel good, Ozpin? Knowing you tried?”

He unhooks the Lamp from his belt next. Its sapphire glow has dimmed to a flicker in the presence before them. It hits the ground with a chime of metal and glass.

“That all of your efforts have failed?”

The Scepter, now. Intricately wrought, as all the Relics are. He throws it down with the others. As soon as he does, he knows he’s made a mistake. His wasted legs won’t hold him.

Ozpin falls to his knees.

“And that all of your hopes,” Salem says, “have been for _nothing?”_

She slides closer. Her black gown whispers against the stone floor. Delicate fingers reach forward, and ever so gently, Salem lifts the Crown from his silver hair.

“Tell me,” Salem purrs, “whatever happened to your _smaller soul?”_   She smiles then, something wicked and full of teeth.

Ozpin takes the blow, lets it bury itself like a knife deep in the remnants of his heart. It burns, like the bite of a Beowulf, like the lick of Cinder’s fires as they clawed up his neck.

“Her name,” he says quietly, “was Ruby Rose.” He’s been burned alive twice, and yet somehow, this hurts more. A final loss of hope.

Salem examines the Crown, turning it this way and that. Violet light dances across the gold.

“Choice,” she murmurs, and drops it into the pile at her feet.

Four pieces of humanity, that would allow them to remake themselves, or so said the God of Light. In the end it had all been so _hopeless._

He thinks of Pyrrha, then. Of lives taken too soon. Of Qrow and Raven. Of Summer.

He thinks of his daughters.

Salem pushes a breath of magic into the pile of gold. The Relics rise into the air and begin to spin. Wetness pricks at the corners of his eyes.

He thinks of Ruby, of her potential, of her brightness. He thinks of a flash of white light atop a tower, one that flickered and died as he clawed himself, inch by inch, from the wreckage.

The Relics spin faster and faster, an endless whirl of golden light. His vision fades to white. He closes his eyes. Tears slip from beneath the lids.

There is silence. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he can feel the presence regardless. He can sense the judgment.

Oz is tired.

Remnant ends in a wave of purple light.

**Author's Note:**

> I have made myself sad and completely blame tumblr. So I decided to share my pain.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> 1\. No I have no idea how Oz got the relics so quickly, but he's magic so we'll pretend it works, yes? Yes.
> 
> 2\. I don't actually think Salem's castle is where she and Oz the Second raised their family, but I am all aboard the angst train.
> 
> 3\. I wrote this in approximately 2 hours and did approximately zero research unless you count listening to "Cold" and the acoustic version of "Time to Say Goodbye" on repeat.
> 
> I hope you all are happy, because I sure as hell am not.
> 
> ALL I WANT IS FOR QRWBY, OZ, AND OSCAR TO HUG IT OUT OKAY?


End file.
